Grand jury in probe sees possible perjury, but no election fraud
A special grand jury that investigated election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia said it saw possible evidence of perjury by “one or more” witnesses who testified before it, according to portions of the jury's final report that were released Thursday. The jurors also unanimously rebutted claims of widespread fraud made by Trump after the 2020 election.
The investigation in Atlanta has been seen as one of the most significant legal threats to Trump, given his personal role in pressuring Georgia election officials to “find” him enough votes to overturn his loss in the state. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said recently that a decision on bringing charges was “imminent.”
The several pages of excerpts released by a judge, however, offered only a narrow window into the full scope of the jury's conclusions, providing no indication of who it believed should be charged, or which violations of Georgia law, beyond perjury, may have taken place.
The special grand jury, which met for nearly seven months in a courthouse in downtown Atlanta, was charged with investigating the actions of Trump and some of his allies in Georgia after the November 2020 elections, and recommending whether indictments should be pursued by prosecutors.
The fact that the judge ordered extensive redactions of the special grand jury's report to protect the due process rights of individuals under investigation indicated that the jurors had, in fact, recommended indictments. In the publicly released portions of the report, the jurors wrote that they were setting forth “our recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes.” But those specific recommendations were not included in what Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney released Thursday.
Even so, the released excerpts underscored the serious threat the Georgia inquiry may pose to Trump and his allies.
Trump portrayed their contents differently. In a post on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon, he wrote, “Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration. The USA is very proud of you!!!”
With the special grand jury's report in hand, Willis will determine whether to use its recommendations as a basis for bringing the case to a regular grand jury, which can issue indictments. In a January hearing about whether the full report should be made public, she spoke of “protecting future defendants' rights,” suggesting that indictments were likely. In that hearing, Willis said that decisions on whether to seek indictment were “imminent,” but she has not specified what that means.
The excerpts indicate the full report is only nine pages, although it has at least one appendix as well. By contrast, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol produced an 845-page report. The Atlanta report was written by local grand jurors, who noted that their group did not include “election law experts or criminal lawyers.” They used their “collective best efforts,” they wrote, to “attend every session, listen to every witness and attempt to understand the facts as presented and the laws as explained.”
A majority of the grand jurors believed “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses,” according to the excerpts from the report, and recommended that Willis “seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The jury also noted that it reached a unanimous conclusion that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” That conclusion, they wrote, came after they heard “extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud” from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, state officials and even “persons still claiming that such fraud took place.”
A Trump spokesperson, Liz Harrington, expressed amusement over that finding. “LOL,” she wrote on Twitter, sharing accusations of fraud in the state that have been debunked.
Willis' office has been conducting the criminal investigation for two years.